Hey guys,

To be honest, I think this post should go into Inkscape & GIMP BUT! I felt what I wanted to say was more a general topic rather than an specific discussion related with "technology".

I have to admit I'm completely new to Inkscape. I just bought a new iMac and decided to take the big step of going "legal", that is to say... yeah, I use to have cracked versions of all Adobe Applications, but once and for all decided to walk "the righteous way".

I think INKSCAPE is amazing!... of course it's still not Illustrator but it's getting closer.

I realized the feature that makes Illustrator such a desired application is not just its standalone capabilities but also its absolute integration with Photoshop, their workflows are tightly integrated, I would say that's precisely their killer feature... yes they have dozens of cool effects and dozens of this and that but nothing that cannot be done in Inkscape or GIMP... maybe with more effort... true, but the important things are that in both application (Inkscape & Gimp) things can be done.

Are you guys at INKSCAPE DEVELOPER TEAM working somehow with the guys of GIMP DEVELOPER TEAM or at least in contact? The same question is extensive toward the SCRIBUS guys.

Each program in it's own ground is amazing but combined...well, there is much to be desired.

If both application could be somehow as integrated as Adobe's ones, that would be the beginning of a new "era for computer graphics application", no kidding.

I believe they are developed very separately. But they all see what each other are doing.

What sort of integration are you looking for.

microUgly wrote:I believe they are developed very separately. But they all see what each other are doing.

What sort of integration are you looking for.

Uff... the ones just come to my mind, keyboard shorcuts, color profiles, path recognition, layer recognition, effects recognition, menu bars (logic, use, paradigm), ....etc.

I know prokoudine keeps us updated on GIMP happenings a lot, and I think Scribus as well, if I'm not mistaken.

Although my recent experience with Scribus, leaves me with the impression that it is not quite so polished at GIMP and Inkscape, yet.

wcarcass wrote:Uff... the ones just come to my mind, keyboard shorcuts, color profiles, path recognition, layer recognition, effects recognition, menu bars (logic, use, paradigm), ....etc.

Well, it's like this.

The teams see each other every year at Libre Graphics Meeting. Some things are discussed like e.g. OpenRaster file format (this year we even had an Adobe guy at the conference). Some things are possible to do together. E.g. all these apps already read system directories for color profiles (sadly, most recent spec coming from XDG is not supported by GIMP yet). Other things are possible and specified, but not implemented yet, like e.g. reading swatches or gradients from system directories that is supported by Inkscape and Scribus, but not by GIMP (you can fix it yourself by adding a new path in Preferences). There is a Bridge-like application slowly coming to help getting this mess organized.

I don't understand what exactly you mean with path recognition or layer recognition or effects recognition.

GIMP, Inkscape and Scribus can read each others SVG files. Both GIMP and Scribus do not support SVG filters. For GIMP this is something that is likely to change as soon as it moves to GEGL which supports SVG beyond paths with flat fills. For Scribus this isn't something that is going to change any time soon unless some new dedicated developer starts working on that.

Scribus doesn't read XCF and doesn't have to. For multilayer images we already have TIFF (supported by Scribus, including clipping paths) and OpenRaster (sadly, not supported by Scribus and Inkscape yet). Inkscape can export XCF with layers.

I don't see menus changing a lot any time soon. I rather dislike Insert menu in Scribus, but I have a suspicion that there is very little we can do here, because Scribus team is a bit stubborn when it comes to changes like that Besides both Inkscape and Scribus deal with objects, whereas GIMP deals with selections, so GIMP will never have e.g. Objects menu or Insert menu, and it won't ever have a Page menu.

More or less same thing applies to keyboard shortcuts: the apps have different sets of tools, and some tools are really implemented differently and will continue to be implemented differently. I can see how Scribus could be more Inkscape-like regarding all the drawing tools (in fact, I dream of a day I could stop prototyping layouts in Inkscape), but I can't see how GIMP can suddenly gain e.g. a tool for inserting an image frame. So you can have logic and shortcuts compatibility only up to a point. Few years ago I even maintained a comparison table for shortcuts. You can find it here.

If I was a C/C++ developer first thing I'd do is bloody well rewrite all the drawing tools in Scribus and get rid of the junk like separate Line drawing tool. Unfortunately (well, not for me ) I'm not a programmer.

Finally there is a question of being able to work on same document in multiple apps at once. There used to be a project to deal with this. It's called Verse. The project is abandoned. I spoke to its past developer few weeks ago, and he told me he would do things differently today. As a matter of fact GEGL, new GIMP's engine, can share its buffers, so in case Inkscape and Scribus ever move to GEGL (there are such plans for Inkscape), it will be possible to share a lot of stuff. But this is a lot of work, and even GIMP itself doesn't make a full use of GEGL yet. The only reason to hold a breath here would be if you were the person to implement all this

Let me know if you want more information on anything.

I am interested in this topic, one thing I can see that will help integration is to have gimp recognize the SVG during a copy pate.
Example: You work on a raster file in Gimp, open Inkscape, do a vector design, copy it. Paste it back in gimp, and have gimp act as you are importing an SVG.


Another way of integration is to have an extension or service that allow easily switching from one software to the next without loosing data. (i.e. Layers, transparecy values) Even if there is a lost as rasterizing it as PNG, have the image provide a quick "Send to Gimp" <-> "Send to Inkscape" option.

JZA wrote:Another way of integration is to have an extension or service that allow easily switching from one software to the next without loosing data. (i.e. Layers, transparecy values) Even if there is a lost as rasterizing it as PNG, have the image provide a quick "Send to Gimp" <-> "Send to Inkscape" option.

Why do you want the raster to be converted to vector ? IMO It should be (at least) optionnal coz I prefer them to be exported as image that I can (or not) rasterize later.

I did a gimp# extension that does export layers/opacity (preserving most of) blend modes (using filters).
Will try to find it.

Don't remember why I didn't publish it (probably coz I was fed up with gimplib being too limited and gimp# being buggy )

v1nce wrote:Why do you want the raster to be converted to vector ? IMO It should be (at least) optionnal coz I prefer them to be exported as image that I can (or not) rasterize later.

I want vector to convert to PATHS. This is what Gimp does when you insert a vector image like SVG or AI.

v1nce wrote:I did a gimp# extension that does export layers/opacity (preserving most of) blend modes (using filters).

Will try to find it.

Oh nice, URL?

I think this is a relevant plugin that should be consider to be integrated with the application. BTW Gimp should handle most of the SVG rendering, the plugin should just trigger the import -> SVG option. AFAIK Gimp supports already the different layers on the SVG. However Inkscape and Gimp represent layers in different manner. Inkscape have objects overlaying on each other, and layers work more as an encapsulation. Gimp on the other hand, call layer to each object in itself. Smart objects or folders is something that Gimp is inserting in the next release which could be more likely to the way Inkscape handle layers.

prokoudine wrote:Scribus doesn't read XCF and doesn't have to. For multilayer images we already have TIFF (supported by Scribus, including clipping paths) and OpenRaster (sadly, not supported by Scribus and Inkscape yet). Inkscape can export XCF with layers.
Let me know if you want more information on anything.

This is great, I would just want to know if this is possible to work seamlessly. Instead of the user having an "Export as XCF" -> "Open Gimp file.xcf". A "Send to gimp" could use this already developed code but in a more seamless way to the user. That is why I think a plugiin that automate this process is not hard at all to provide.

Gimp already have certain integration with other applications, mostly gnome, things like "XSane", "Gtkam2" and "Gphoto" even CD writing plugins.

prokoudine wrote:The teams see each other every year at Libre Graphics Meeting. Some things are discussed like e.g. OpenRaster file format (this year we even had an Adobe guy at the conference).

Someone knows where I could get openraster specs ? i tried many times but site seems broken

This is the obvious link, http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifi ... OpenRaster

If you have already been there, apolgies

rich2005 wrote:This is the obvious link, http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifi ... OpenRaster

If you have already been there, apolgies

thank you.

Looks like my prev queries lead me to wikipedia article which has broken links. I searched a bit on freedesktop.org too but didn't find at that time.